Alex J. Wood’s First Solo Exhibition Is A Blast

New Art Projects is Fred Man’s spacious new gallery on Sheep Lane E8 nestling between Regent’s Canal London Fields and Victoria Park. The gallery, although only 6 months old is carving an interesting program presenting mid career artists as well as new comers.

Alex J. Wood’s first Solo exhibition: Lift Off is of the later. Mr Wood a recent graduate of MA Fine Art in Chelsea Art College presents a unique composition of sculpture and working drawings. His subject of old and new aerodynamic technology meets apocalyptic showdown has a curious taste: On first glimpse the heavy bronze cast rockets and air balloons appears as a serious technological inquest into the subject, but on a deeper examination – juxtaposed with other works such as “ Old Peculiar” (2015) combining everyday inexpensive materials such as cardboard, wax, and foam with deliberately clumsy attachments, it transpires Alex’s is creating amusing objects exploring human endeavors and failed attempts.

The well curated exhibition leads the viewer from one room to another where the models grow in their eccentricity and Alex’s painstakingly obsessive labor unravels. Alex ‘subject matter has included everything from the Titanic, to the world’s first ever flight in the Montgolfier balloon, which famously caught light over the roof tops of Paris. Human endeavour science, sailing, the industrial revolution, space travel and risk are all displayed as if looked at and examined through a home made nineteenth century lens with charming results.

Alex was recently chosen winner of The Picton Art Prize and is currently embarking on a monumental sculpture. He has also been awarded in October 2015 a grant from The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation in Canada. In 2015 he was shortlisted for both The Mark Tanner Sculpture Award and The Henry Moore Plinth Prize, and in 2014 selected for art residency in Beijing, China. Alex was resident artist at Tokyo Wonder Site in Japan in April 2013, where he exhibited in Tokyo and London. He was recently commissioned by Penguin Books in 2015 to create a sculpture for Foyles Flagship London store. Whilst on MA Fine Art at Chelsea Alex was the 2013 recipient of The Patrick and Kelly Lynch Scholarship where his work is held as well as in various other private collections in the USA and Europe as well as the University of the Arts London collection. In both 2013 and 2014 hewas shortlisted for The Clifford Chance Sculpture Award.